I have a mystery and I'm hoping you'll keep it in mind while you do your explorations. The UAH Daily Temperature website ( http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/ ) provides daily satellite temperatures for channel 5, nominally listed as the 600 mb level. See http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/data/amsu_daily_85N85S_ch05.r002.txt

Here is a plot for the last two years

http://davidsmith1.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/0623092.jpg

which shows a clear annual variability, with the max in the NH summer as expected.

If I remove the 10-yr daily average from each daily temperature reading then I get this plot

http://davidsmith1.files.wordpress.com/2009/05/0623091.jpg

I think that the trend is tied to ENSO. What intrigues me is not the trend but rather it's the oscillation over a shorter term, about 30-60 days. Temperatures rise rapidly then, in a few days, drop rapidly.

What causes the rapid rise and equally rapid drop? In other words, what physical behavior is tied to those oscillations?

The oscillations seem to stay in a range and amplitude. Why is that?

I think the behavior originates in the tropics, possible tied to MJO behavior. I think it's important, because when the duration of the rises seem to relate to the underlying trends.

Maybe there's some way you can statistically characterize the raw data. Also, by comparing the data to other atmospheric measures, work back to an explanation. I am stumped.

(This is a note to you, as I do not have your e-mail, and not actually a comment for this thread.My e-mail, FYI, is mndsmith33@earthlink.net)

there is a 2 months lag between nino 3.4 anomalies(now +0.7°C according to your graph) and global ssta and ssta are already higher then 2006-2007 el nino(that reached +1.4°C)....this latest week is rather anomalous.

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